Increase Your Website Traffic with These Killer Marketing Hacks

Increase Your Website Traffic with These Killer Marketing Hacks

Marketers have many goals, including one vitally important and universal objective: driving more website traffic. We marketing professionals know that more traffic translates into more leads, increased sales, and, ultimately, higher revenue. But securing that traffic ― and driving the right type of traffic ― isn’t always easy.

There’s no shortage of tactics, but using the most effective ones will ensure that you secure the greatest return on your investment. Check out these effective strategies to inspire your efforts.

Increase Your Website Traffic with Proven Topics

Creating content for your website is an important task, but picking the right topics isn’t always simple. Generating more traffic is much easier when you take the guesswork out of selecting content that readers will love and share, helping to drive traffic to your site. The trick is finding content that’s proven to perform well … and then building on it.

For example, let’s say that I want to create a piece about email marketing, but I’m not sure which topic will generate the most traffic. Tools such as BuzzSumo are helpful for determining what subjects and focuses have performed well in the past. Using the tool, I search the term and receive the following results:

Two of the top results are “Ending your emails with this 1 word vastly improves the response rate” and “Use these words at the end of your emails to increase your chance of getting a reply.” These posts received thousands of shares on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media channels.

This topic is proven to be successful, so take it and build off it. For example, maybe the previous articles included a list of words that increase email marketing conversion rates. If so, you could also include a list of words, but perhaps also provide real examples of campaigns that used them, and then write about the concrete results. Or you could interview topic marketing experts about the words that convert best in their emails.

Key takeaway. If you want a greater chance of creating content that generates more traffic, then leverage content that’s proven to perform well. To maximize results, take the time to level it up with research, case studies, and/or interviews.

Create Better Headlines

The importance of headlines can’t be overstated for all content, but especially for website content, which is critical to drive people to your site and keep them there. Recent research provides insight into what types of headlines drive the most traffic. The survey found that, out of the thousands of headlines published over a three-month period in 2017, three phrases created the highest level of engagement:

Will make you …

This is why …

Can we guess …?

The research suggests that the top-performing headline, which is “Will make you …,” was so successful because it’s a linking phrase ― it forges a link between the content and the potential impact on the reader.

You can also utilize a tool like CoSchedule to help you determine the best possible headline for the content you’re creating. It analyzes word balance, length, emotional impact, provides tips, shows the Google snippet, and more!

Key takeaway. If you want to instantly drive higher engagement, more shares, and greater traffic to your website, maximize your impact by testing headlines that are focused on the impact to the reader.

Drive Traffic through Guest Blog Posts

A popular strategy for getting significant increases in website traffic is guest blogging. With this strategy, you identify influencers in your business, create relationships, and write high-value posts for their blogs.

For example, let’s say that you sell software that leverages the Internet of Things. Find influencers in that space who share your target market. These people may have large or small audiences, and both are good. Once you identify these individuals, you can start creating relationships, commenting on their content, and connecting through social media. You can pitch guest blog posts, which will allow you to get in front of their audience, present amazing content, and hopefully entice readers into learning more about your company ― usually through some type of lead magnet.

But let’s back up and first uncover how to pick the best influencers for your brand.

Finding the right influencers. Does your target market spend time on Twitter? If so, check out tools such as Followerwonk, which is an advanced Twitter analytics tool that allows you to search Twitter profiles and bios by keywords. You can also use tools such BuzzSumo, which can be used for finding the right content topics.

Pitch a guest blog post. Once you identify a list of the right influencers, check out their sites. Do they have blogs? If so, they may already have guidelines established for accepting blog posts, and they may be published on the website. If they don’t, send a quick email and ask. Once you find out, send a carefully crafted pitch.

Capturing maximum results through a lead magnet. Once your blog post is accepted, you will likely get a bio section, which highlights the author of the post. Don’t waste this space! Instead of linking to your site, set up a landing page with a lead magnet. This could be an eBook that addresses your target audience’s largest pain point, a great infographic, or some other high-value piece of content. The goal? Capture each piece of traffic that you get and start nurturing the visitor through the sales funnel. After all, once someone new arrives at your site, you don’t want that person to get away.

Similarly, you can also allow others to guest post on your website to drive greater traffic. When others create content, they share it with their audience, which helps you bring new people to your site.

Key takeaway. A guest-posting strategy can help provide large spikes of traffic to your website, but it’s also part of a long-term traffic-building strategy. The more content you post on related sites, the more traffic that will trickle into your site, even after that initial spike, which provides long-term results, leads, and sales.

Leverage the Power of Visual

Visual content is starting to get a lot of attention from marketers, and for good reason ― it provides a large impact. Check out these stats on using images, graphics, and videos in content:

37 percent of marketers said that visual marketing was the most important form of content for their businesses.

Four times as many consumers report they would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

The data is impressive, but how does it relate to images and driving more traffic to your brand? Humans are visual beings and can absorb that type of data much faster and easier than other types of information. As a result, they prefer it ― and share it. This translates into greater interest and more website traffic.

A great place to start with creating visual content is developing infographics to share via social media. If you’ve started to forge relationships with influencers, you can reach out and ask them about what they’re working on. Then see if you can contribute an infographic that would make their next blog post stronger. As a result, they would likely share that infographic, which would be credited and linked to your site, driving greater traffic. There are some really fun tools out there that make creating video a both a snap and affordable: GoAnimate, Moovly, VideoScribe. Tools like Canva or Vizualize can help you make engaging visual infographics as well, for little to no cost.

Key takeaway. Examine your existing strategy and ask the question “How can I make more content visual?” Take a look at your existing content an see if you can just repurpose it into a different, more visual format. Then look for different strategies and tools to help you create those types of content and increase your website traffic.

A Few Last Words

The above strategies will help you increase your website traffic while advantageously planting seeds to continue to nurture that traffic in the future. But it’s key to remember that creating traffic is not a sprint ― it’s a marathon. Some of these methods, such as guest posting, will give you initial large spurts of traffic, but the longer you work at these tactics, the greater long-term traffic you’ll build.

Plus, it’s critical to keep in mind that, while having lots of traffic is excellent, when you let that traffic slip through your fingers, it becomes pointless. Instead, entice readers to take that next step, such as exchanging their email for a high-value piece of content. That way you’ll convert more traffic into leads and ensure that your business will thrive in the future.